Documentary video on no-tillage in California being prepared

July 1, 2023

A video documentary featuring five of the CA and AZ farmers who have been part of the USDA NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant project, "No-till network for California," is in the final stages of production and will be released in the near future through the University of California's Conservation Agriculture Systems Innovation Center's You Tube channel.  

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVd3wKF3P6fA4zQWVKIouWA 

The documentary will feature Eddie Sajian of Hanford, CA, Rick Adams of Laton, Paul Strojan of Farmington, Dr. Henri Carter MD of Yuma, AZ, and Cary Crum, of Fresno, CA and will show them describing details of the innovative approaches that they are working on to improve the overall performance of their agricultural production systems.  The release date for the documentary is scheduled for late July 2023.  

April 12, 2024

The UC ANR CASI Center hosted five members of the Soil Health Institute's US Regenerative Ag Cotton Program in the San Joaquin Valley on April 11th and 12th, 2024.  The Soil Health Institute (SHI) is a non-profit organization based in Morrisville, NC that conducts research and extension education related to soil health management.  Five SHI members, Diana Bagnall, David Lamm, Jessica Kelton, Emily Ball, and Nate Looker, took part in the two-day tour of six San Joaquin Valley farms and the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Associations.  San Joaquin Valley farmers who hosted the SHI members included Mark Borba of Borba Farms in Riverdale, CA, Mark McKean of McKean Farms also in Riverdale, Tony Azevedo of Stone Land Company in Stratford, CA, Cannon Michael and Derek Azevedo of Bowles Farming in Los Banos, Gary and Mari Martin of Pikalok Farms in Mendota, and Gary Smith of Ingleby Farms in Burrel.  Roger Isom, President of the CCGGA in Fresno, also hosted the SHI guests.

SHI requested help from CASI with the cotton tour and discussions that took place as an effort to expand their national Regenerative Ag Cotton Program to California in 2024.  The tour provided excellent opportunities for SHI to learn about California cotton and to make connections with leading cotton farmers in the San Joaquin Valley who may become part of the baseline soil sampling project that SHI is looking to conduct with cotton producers this year.

In addition to the farmers who generously hosted the SHI guests, several other local California folks including Cary Crum, Kimber Moreland, Rob Roy, Jacob Wright, and Olivia Peters helped CASI's Jeff Mitchell in sharing information about California cotton systems.  

Soil health monitoring conducted at SJV reduced disturbance and cover cropped fields!

As part of the USDA NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant, Creating a no-till network in California, extensive baseline soil sampling has now been done at several San Joaquin Valley farms that are employing the soil health management practices of no-tillage, strip-tillage and/or cover crops.  These farms include sites at the diversified permanent and annual crop farm of Eddie Sajian  in Hanford, CA, the dairy silage fields of Rick Adams near Laton, CA, the grazing pasture lands of Paul Strojan in Farmington, CA, cotton fields at Bowles Farming in Los Banos, CA, and tomato acreage of Woolf Farming in Huron.  Determinations of soil carbon, aggregation, infiltration, and % residue cover have been done at each site and findings have been discussed with partner farmers for each location.  In addition, participating farmers have been encouraged to begin conducting their own ongoing monitoring by using the assay techniques shown here.  They were also provided with a PVC meter square quadrat to use in sampling surface biomass and a set of sieves as shown below that are used for determinations of soil aggregate stability.